Saturday, 16 January 2010

The Jardin in Winter

At the moment we are having trouble remembering how hot it was in summer, and how much hard work goes into keeping cool in July and August. Yesterday did get into the positives, it was a whole 2°C. Not as balmy as Thursday, which was 6°C and feeling positively warm, but nowhere as cold as it has been for most of the past 3 weeks.

Earlier this week we went down to the potager and took this photo. All the trees appear to be setting new growth already (isn't it too early?), but as I am no expert on the weather, trees or gardening, I will make no predictions.

4 comments:

Isn't this a verger rather than a potager - orchard than a kitchen garden? Maybe I can't see the raised beds behind the camera. Hope that stove is keeping you snug - it is a relief that the cold has departed old blighty too. It was feeezing.

I'd better not let you loose on our front lawn Susan... Pauline keeps ticking me off as it means that the grass won't be mown!However, I've successfully moved a lot of them [all Lizard] to the sides where they flourish... but as the lawn is not very close, YIPPEE, we get loads more!! I'll be hand mowing round the ones at the side once I've finished the wiring... unless it is still drowning weather!

Tim: moving terrestrial orchids is a tricky business, and best practice is not to do so at all, but sometimes its that or lose them for some other reason. You can't move them very far and you need to take out a nice big lump of soil with them to ensure they have a supply of the right mycorrhizal fungi. Without that they will die. They don't take kindly to physical disturbance and may die anyway.

The other thing you need to consider is the law. You need to know which species are protected and where, and what your land use designation is. You can't sell wild sourced native orchids under any circumstances, or even collect seed without a licence in many cases.

When Do You Eat Cheese in France?
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In the Loire Valley most people eat some cheese every day. All the local
cheeses are made from goats milk and that's what people will mostly eat,
but they ...

About Us

Susan was born in Victoria, but moved to Queensland when she was 11. Simon was born in London, but moved to Canberra when he was 7, and to Queensland when he was 28. In 1997 they moved to London. Susan worked for a large heritage and nature conservation trust and Simon taught music technology at tertiary level.

Now we live in Preuilly-sur-Claise, a small town with a population of less than 1000 people in the south of the Loire Valley. We write about the restoration of our house, the history of our local area, nature, cooking and anything else that strikes us as interesting. When we are not blogging we run Loire Valley Time Travel, doing individually tailored tours of the Touraine for anglophone visitors in our classic Citroëns, Célestine and Claudette.

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